


Dream and Memory

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-18
Updated: 2006-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by greyathena</p><p>'Even the ten-years-ago Winifred, the perennial understudy, might have guessed that one day she'd be looking at Pauline Fossil (or at a maybe-Pauline, anyway) from across the street and feeling too much of a nothing to go and say hello.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream and Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to keep this as British as possible, but I'm not British, so please excuse any lapses.
> 
> Written for Helena Larkin

 

 

It was something small, something almost unbelievably minor, that made her look twice at the woman across the street. It was her upright way of walking, or the manner in which she pushed thick blond hair (much thicker than any nice English girl's ought to be, really) behind both ears at once, or the familiar slant of her nose when the sun lit up her profile.

It was likely and it was unlikely - she hadn't been in any films in ages, or not in leading roles anyway, and she had always wanted to be on the stage. And there were all those new productions going up as the London theatre world gradually recovered from the years of war and damage done in the Blitz. But who would want to leave California right now, things being as they were in Britain?

Even the ten-years-ago Winifred, the perennial understudy, might have guessed that one day she'd be looking at Pauline Fossil (or at a maybe-Pauline, anyway) from across the street and feeling too much of a nothing to go and say hello. Back in their days of joint dressing rooms and teas with Miss Brown and the other girls, Pauline had always been "other" to Winifred - no matter how friendly she might act, no matter how sincere her chagrin at having acted the diva, there was something separate about her. She was not a person for whom a friend might think up pet names, or with whom one might hold hands in the street.

Although only rarely in the outside world would Winifred ever have touched Pauline without Pauline initiating the contact - and that happened rarely enough itself - the dressing room was a different matter. Winifred's memories of Pauline, and of any productions in which they had appeared together, were a tangled whirl of powder and greasepaint, the dusty oily scent of backstage and the acrid taste of tea without milk, the rustle of skirts against stockings and the hooks of Pauline's dresses under Winifred's stumbling fingers. Pauline wincing at the sight of blood in her ballet shoes, tugging too hard as she fastened Winifred's skirt, blowing into their shared dressing room in a flurry of shoes and hair ribbons and crinoline and wordlessly accepting help with changing into her next costume. Pauline's hair falling over Winifred's shoulder as they both tried to tie her sash at the same time. Pauline burning her finger on the iron while trying to curl Winifred's stubbornly straight hair, and spending the rest of the afternoon with the finger in her mouth; Pauline brushing biscuit crumbs off Winifred's lap. Pauline wincing as she pulled "Alice's" little-girl corset over soft young bosoms and waited for Winifred to pull it tight, and an unfamiliar heavy clenching in Winifred's abdomen every time she did.

In her mind, it all blended together with the scent of freshly starched crinolines and the sting of blistered feet and the heart-rushing thrill of the stage, so that more than once the grown-up Winifred had woken, red-faced, from dreams that had woven her memories together until she thought she could feel Pauline's fingers in her hair, thought she remembered the warmth of bare skin under her fingers in place of the many layers of cool satin that had actually separated them.

In a way it wasn't fair to have dwelt on Pauline all this time - and really Winifred hadn't meant to, only you can't control your dreams, can you? - especially when it was Petrova who had really been most decent to Winifred that entire time before and after Pauline went away. Especially when it was Petrova who had kissed Winifred once on the cheek when she was leaving to live with her uncle, and again once on the lips when they ran into each other years later in a cafe in Piccadilly. Petrova with her short hair and her brash self-assured manner had sat down next to Winifred and begun talking as if six years' time had not separated them, had casually ordered Winifred another cup of tea and paid for it herself, had talked of Madame and the Academy and Pauline's success and Posy's tour of Italy and of aeroplanes and soldiers and women's organisations until Winifred began to feel out of breath just listening to her. Then Petrova had given her an unpleasantly penetrating look out of those sharp dark eyes and said, 'Pauline asked about you. This week. She never did before.'

Of all the things Winifred would like to have said, 'Never?' was low on the list, but that was what came out nevertheless.

Petrova blew in a frustrated sort of way over the surface of her tea. 'Well maybe not never. But not in a while anyway. I think she heard about you from Madame or something. So can I tell her you're well?'

Enough blood had rushed to Winifred's head in that moment that the flow of it had filled her ears and drowned out any sense she might have taken from Petrova's words. 'Madame?' she asked helplessly.

'No, silly, Pauline. Can I tell her you're -'

'Yes, tell her I'm fine,' Winifred said quickly, downing the rest of her tea in one hasty swallow so that she couldn't say anything else.

'All right, I will.' There was that searching glance again. 'You and she were quite close before she left, I remember.'

'Not really,' Winifred said casually. There, she had done something right, anyway. 'We were together often at the theatre, that's all.'

Petrova only looked at her eloquently. A moment later, when she had finished her tea, she leaned forward and brushed Winifred's lips with a lingering kiss. While Winifred was looking around to see if anyone else in the cafe had seen, Petrova was gathering her things and tossing lightly over her shoulder, 'That was from Pauline,' as she walked out the door. Winifred was left with the imagined scent of Pauline's skin and a confusion of dream and memory and guilty pleasure.

Now, watching the maybe-Pauline reach the corner and hesitate, Winifred was suddenly certain that she recognized that unsure gesture of fingertips to lips, the wobbly-ankled stance of nervousness. She imagined Pauline's brow furrowing and her nose wrinkling in the old familiar way (now familiar to many thousands of film fans as well) as she - what? Tried to remember her way around London? Looked for a taxi? Wondered if she had forgotten her purse? Before she could think about stopping herself, Winifred was on her feet, dropping the money for her tea onto her table, gathering her coat and hurrying out the door.

'Pauline!' she called as she reached the corner opposite to the hesitating blonde woman. 'Pauline!' She was nervous enough that she pronounced the other girl's name oddly, with the accent on the wrong syllable.

The other woman turned, and then there was no doubt - Pauline Fossil was standing on the corner, frowning as she watched Winifred hurrying across the street toward her, digging both hands deep into her pockets, probably deciding how to escape should Winifred turn out to be dangerous in any way.

'Pauline!' Winifred panted more quietly, in what she hoped was a reassuring way. 'I thought that was you, but I didn't think you were in the country.'

Pauline's pretty frown deepened for a moment before vanishing almost entirely. 'Is it Winifred?' she asked. 'Really, Winifred? Goodness, I haven't had any news of you in ages. How have you been?'

Suddenly talking to Pauline again after nearly ten years, Winifred felt her own ankles wobble and the twenty witty remarks she would like to have made fled her awkward tongue. 'Oh, I'm - fine,' she said lamely, glancing down at the sidewalk and studying the tip of her left shoe. 'How are you? How's Miss Brown, and Petrova, and Posy?'

'All fine,' Pauline replied. Winifred thought she heard kindness and sympathy in Pauline's voice, and she hated it. 'I heard you're teaching at the Academy.'

'Yes.' A long embarrassed stretch of moments elapsed while Winifred found she had nothing to say about her work.

'That's good.' Pauline looked away, hands still clasped in her pockets. 'I'm doing a run at the Royal Albert, you know.'

'No? Really?' Winifred's enthusiasm had the magic ability of making her temporarily forget her awkwardness. 'In what?'

'Their _Shrew_ next month. I'm playing Bianca.'

'I'll have to see it.'

'That'll be nice. Come backstage if you do.' Pauline glanced around her and sighed softly. 'I must be going, I'm sorry - I was just trying to remember which way is the Underground . . .'

'That way, three blocks.' Winifred's outstretched hand brushed the sleeve of Pauline's coat as she pointed, and it was all she could do not to hold on and detain her.

'Thanks.' Pauline leaned forward, with a bit of the film star's affectation in her air, and brushed Winifred's cheek with her lips. Winifred could never remember later what, if anything, Pauline had said after that, but she remembered Pauline hurrying away toward the Underground with the scent of her perfume lingering in the air. In Winifred's dreams, that scent mixed with greasepaint and wilting roses and strong tea and powder on warm bodies and added itself to the dark and secretive melange that meant _Pauline_.

 


End file.
